Mermaid Pirate Dispatch

The spacecraft’s propulsion sent the Mediterranean waters spraying up onto the slanted glass and stone face of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the new library of Alexandria. It hovered violently, immense power emanating from its enigmatic engines.

Sam shielded her face from the mist that blew at her along the boardwalk some hundred meters or so from the library. She squinted through the waters and harsh morning sunlight, trying to make out the general shape of the craft. It was wide and large, but that was all she could be sure of.

An exact replay of the pre-recorded message blasted out over the screaming propulsion system. “Greetings humanity. We have returned to retrieve the information repository that we let you borrow.”

Sam’s ears popped and she cracked her jaw, wincing at the tremendous volume of the craft’s announcement. Suddenly, all went silent for a moment. The ship cut its engines and floated for a pause before slowly falling onto the surface of the Mediterranean Sea. It came crashing down, sending three meter tidal waves to the shore. Sam ran for a nearby hill away from the shore, desperately seeking shelter. Before she found a place to hide she was hit from behind by the cold, salty sea water. She had the brief sensation of flying before being suddenly and unceremoniously dropped on a street a dozen meters from where she’d started. Miraculously the wave hadn’t thrown her into a nearby building or broken her in half across a lamp post.

Several car alarms began sounding, filling the intense void of silence left by the extraterrestrial spacecraft. Sam struggled to her feet, soaking wet. Her shirt and jeans clung tightly to her cold body, weighing her down. The morning breeze made her gasp and she flicked her arms, wiped her face, and shivered, staring at the massive craft bobbing in slow motion just off the shore.

In that moment a host of survival instincts and urges to satiate her curiosity went to war. Her legs twitched to run away. She felt an unseen force expelling her from the vicinity of the gigantic metal structure in the water. But questions that needed answers seized her by the throat and threatened sleepless nights and years of regret if she didn’t go closer to investigate.

The air exploded around her as the announcement played again at the same volume as before, but without the competing engine noise. She recoiled away from the source of the sound, holding her hands tightly over her ears and clamping her eyes shut. The sound shook her internal organs and left her chest empty and heart pounding. But the message and its implications were too much for an Egyptologist to ignore. A borrowed information repository? When had they left it, and into whose care?

Sam had to know.

She looked around, trying to get her bearings. The wave had tossed her onto a street she knew well. She jogged toward the boardwalk again, water gushing in her shoes and squishing between her toes as she ran. Her soaked hair mostly stuck to the sides of her face but some of it slapped and whipped around while water drained out and ran down the back of her neck. The briny water was in her nose and she spat and coughed against the wind until at last she arrived at the plaza in front of the spectacular work of art that was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

She had arrived at the same time as a small craft that must have detached from the mothership. It was nearly pill shaped, mostly smooth with a few lines and features that gave it a sparse amount of texture. It had no windows, and it rested on four landing legs. A door was already opened and from inside a group of three aliens were emerging.

Sam held her breath. These didn’t look like aliens, they looked very much like humans. They wore simple clothing that almost resembled something she might expect to find on earth, but not quite. Their tops were woven fabric, with a coarse weave and bright colors. They wore accouterments on their shirts that glistened in the sunlight. They all wore long, flowing skirts made from a more fine and smooth fabric. One had all the features of a human female, including long hair, while the others were decidedly male. They both appeared bald and wore tiny squares of fabric on their heads, secured in place with strings that tied under their chins. The female had no head covering, and her hair was hanging shiny and smooth in long, straight strands without any styling. Her harsh jaw line and big eyes were intimidating, especially since she had already locked eyes with Sam.

Sam froze and stared at the woman without moving. The small party of visitors stopped as well. Despite there being a handful of others locals in the vicinity, the three extraterrestrials were all observing Sam with pointed interest. After a moment they advanced toward her. She was frozen, unable to move, or perhaps just afraid that any movement on her part could trigger an intergalactic war.

Sam heard a soft, kind woman’s voice coming from the female. Her mouth was not moving, but it was definitely a sound and not just a voice in her head. “We have analyzed the linguistic tendencies across the human globe and determined that this language has the highest probability of achieving successful communication outcomes.”

They both stared at each other. Just as Sam was about to nod her head, the woman looked down at one of the devices attached to her shirt, touched it, and then Sam heard the same voice uttering what she assumed to be Chinese with its tonal inflections and stuttering cadence.

“No, no,” Sam said. “I speak English well enough.”

The woman smiled, touched the device on her chest again, and the voice resumed in English. “Excellent. Now, please take us to the information repository. We entrusted it to your people at this very site.”

“When?” Sam asked. “When did you leave it with us?” She immediately regretted asking the question. There were too many considerations when it came to measuring time. But before she had finished considering the problematic nature of the question, a response came from the device on the woman’s shirt.

“Your culture appears to unanimously mark time in terms of revolutions around your host star. Exactly two thousand four hundred and thirty nine point four three one two two three revolutions have passed since we entrusted the repository to your people. We had only promised that you could have it for two thousand cycles. We are within the agreed upon time period for retrieval.”

Sam looked over her shoulder at the library building.

“Is this the new monument in which you house the repository?” The woman asked. “It is very different from the one that was built near this site last time we visited.”

Sam winced. “The repository,” she began. “Can you describe it for me?”

“It was a collection of bound and unbound documents on woven sheets, recorded using dyes and threads according to the custom of our people. It was most convenient since your people were much too primitive to interact with our more advanced information storage media. The woven pages of our repository were of cultural significance to our people, and we must return them to their sacred keeping grounds soon in order to maintain the delicate balance of our society.”

Sam felt sick. “Crap,” she muttered, more reflexively than intentionally.

The woman’s face contorted and she looked down at the ground. She looked up again. “I do not see any excrement. The meaning of this word in this context is lost on me.”

Sam’s shoulders pulled up into a half shrug and she grimaced. “I’m afraid I have bad news for you,” she said.

The woman cocked her face a little to one side and she looked on expectantly.

“There was a war,” Sam began. “It happened more than two thousand revolutions ago. Everyone from that time is gone. We have crude, unreliable records from that time, but none of us was around at the time, so we can’t be held responsible. I hope you understand.” Beneath the layer of salt water, Sam could feel herself sweating profusely.

“We are aware your species only lives for approximately fifty to one hundred revolutions around your star. We understand that you were not involved in the war. What does the war have to do with our information repository?”

Sam tried to smile sympathetically, but she wasn’t sure if the facial expression would be understood. “One of the leaders in that war had his soldiers start a fire here in Alexandria. That fire spread to the library where I believe your repository would have been stored. Somewhere around forty thousand scrolls and documents were burned and lost forever in that fire. I highly doubt we still have your information repository. If it wasn’t destroyed, we’ve surely lost it.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. The woman’s face was impassive. The men watched her carefully. Sam felt herself vibrating internally, shaking with fear. Eventually the woman’s eyes settled on Sam’s and the voice returned. “Show us what you have,” she said simply.

Sam gawked open mouthed and gasped. “We have so much,” she began. “But perhaps we can start with some internet searches and…”

“Yes,” the voice said. “Do what you can. We must retrieve whatever still exists. It is imperative. Show us everything that you can show us.”

Sam pulled her cold phone from the soaking pants pocket where it lived. She was grateful for the nearly universal demand for water resistance in smart phones. “Alright,” she said, moving to stand at the woman’s side. She showed her the screen and searched for ‘oldest living documents from library at Alexandria” and began scrolling through the results.

[Reddit Post]

Note: If you saw the social media post associated with this story you may have noticed that the story is accompanied by a photo of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. I took that photo in February of 2008 when I was lucky enough to get to spend a month in Egypt studying Arabic.